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Advanced search is divided into two main parts, and one or more groups in each of the main parts. The main parts are the "Search for" (including) and the "Remove from search" (excluding) part. (The excluding part might not be visible until you hit "NOT" for the first time.) You can add new groups to both the including and the excluding part by using the buttons "OR" or "NOT" respectively, and you can add more search options to all groups through the drop down menu on the last row (in each group).

For a result to be included in the search result, is it required to fit all added including parameters (in at least one group) and not fit all parameters in one of the excluding groups. This system with the two main parts and their groups makes it possible to combine two (or more) distinct searches into one search result, while being flexible in removing results from the final list.

EU regulations, decisions and policy making are matters that concern every resident in the EU and risk and benefit assessment and analysis form part of the EU decision and policy making. This thesis discusses the decision/policy making in the EU and the risk assessment activities of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), as well as ECHA’s socio-economic analysis activities. It also studies the role of the European Commission and the Comitology process. The EU regulates what chemicals or food stuffs/ingredients, for instance additives, may be made available in the European market. How the decisions are made about what is allowed and what not, and who makes those decisions, is not necessarily evident due to the complexity of the processes. In this thesis the decision making at different stages of the EU regulatory processes has been identified and analysed in order to find out by whom and how the decisions are made. The method used was a literature search with an overview of the existing theories and research from the areas of EU decision making, risk assessment and risk management. The regulatory processes were studied from a decision making perspective with the aim to identify and record possible decision making opportunities of different actors beyond the European Commission. The decision making opportunities were classified and organised based on their level of impact to the processes. Two real cases were studied: the restriction of lead in jewellery under REACH Annex XV restrictions and the authorisation of ammonium chloride in food under Flavourings regulation. Decision making opportunities and methods were looked for in those processes. It was found that while, in the studied cases, there appeared possibilities to ensure science based good regulatory decision/policy making, it remained uncertain and possibly politicised. It was also revealed that in certain steps the processes lacked transparency.

The ongoing digitalization of public administration and increasedautomation of legal decision-making bears promise to benefit citizens,businesses and other stakeholders through simpler and more efficient civilprocesses, and thus has great impact on the urban planning and buildingprocess. However, automation of decision-making that is directed orconstrained by normative systems such as laws, regulations and policies,requires a detailed and accurate representation of these concepts andtheir constituent parts, and the domain to which they are applied. Thispaper combines two perspectives on formalisation and classification oflegal relations within the urban planning and building domain. In a crossdisciplinaryfashion, the paper analyses and describes a small part of thisdomain at a higher level of abstraction and formalization using two differentanalysis instruments. Using these tools, we perform structural and conceptualas well as logical analyses of two specific snapshots of a fictitious propertysubdivision case in Sweden, focusing on the legal relations between differententities and parties involved in the specific situations. The structural analysisuses the Land Administration Domain Model ISO 19152:2012 standardformalism, and the logical analysis is based on the notion of atomic types oflegal relations. The paper discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses ofthe two tools regarding the formal representation of rights, restrictions andresponsibilities of different parties in the land administration domain, as wellas how the tools relate to each other and how they can be aligned. This papertakes one step towards a deeper understanding of the domain, and identifyareas for future research that may provide better conditions for efficient andtransparent use of geospatial information, and automation of the propertysubdivision process and other related civil processes.

People’s belief that an environmentally friendly item that is added to a set of conventional items has the ability to reduce the total environmental impact of these items could lead to unwanted environmental consequences. An averaging bias seems to underpin this negative footprint illusion: people make their estimates based on the average of the environmental impact produced by the items rather than their accumulative sum. We report a study using a problem-solving transfer paradigm to explore if this preoccupation to think in terms of an average can be eliminated by fostering a summative mindset. The results demonstrate that, participants can correctly estimate that environmental impact will increase when a “green” car is added to a set of petrol cars, but only when this task is preceded by a task that engenders a summation judgment. Our evidence indicates that the negative footprint illusion can be tempered by problem-solving transfer whereby a primed concept (summation) is used adaptively on subsequent judgments, thereby correcting for bias in environmental judgments.

4. Aktieinvesterande kvinnor

McIntosh, Johanna

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Computer and Geospatial Sciences, Decision, Risk and Policy Analysis.

There is an economic inequality today between women and men, which is problematic in various ways. Women generally have lower wages and less wealth. In addition, and perhaps partly as a consequence of this, they also invest less in stocks than men. This can be seen as problematic since stock investments is the savings form that generally yields the highest return. This qualitative study is therefore about women and their investments. The study aims to create an understanding of how female investors make their investment decisions. The study’s focus is based on psychological bias, which is an element of Behavioral Economics. Based on previous research which deals with psychological biases in individual Indian investors, this study researches a new target group, Swedish female investors. Ten Swedish female investors have been interviewed and their answers have been analyzed. The results show how several psychological biases have affected their investment decisions in the categories affective influences and emotions, strategies for information management and perceptual organizational principles and psychological motives.

In a previous work we developed GISwaps, a novel method for geospatial decision-making based on Even Swaps. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation of a visualization framework integrated with this method, implemented within a decision support system. This evaluation is based on two different studies. In the quantitative study, 15 student participants used GISwaps with no visual features, and 15 participants used GISwaps with the integrated visual framework, as the tool in a solar farm site location case study. The results of the quantitative evaluation show positive impact of the visualization in terms of increased coherency in trade-offs. The results also show a statistically significant difference in average trade-off values between the groups, with users from the non-visual group setting on average 20% higher trade-off values compared with the users in the visual group. In the qualitative study, we had one expert in GIS, two experts in decision-making and two experts in solar energy as a focus user group. Data in this study were obtained by observations and semi-structured interviews with the participants. The impact of the visualization framework was assessed positively by all participants in the expert group.

Decision-making methods used in geospatial decision-making are often computationally complex prescriptive methods, details of which are rarely transparent to the decision maker. However, having a deep understanding of the details and mechanisms of the applied method is a prerequisite for the efficient use thereof. In this paper, we present a novel decision-making framework that emanates from the need for intuitive and easy-to-use decision support systems for geospatial multi-criteria decision-making. The framework consists of two parts: the decision making model, and the interactive visualization framework. The decision-making model is based on the concept of quasi-satisficing, and as such, it is intuitive and easy to understand and apply. It integrates even swaps, a prescriptive decision-making method, with the findings of behavioural decision-making theories. Providing visual feedback and interaction opportunities throughout the decision-making process, the interactive visualization part of the framework helps the decision maker gain better insight into the decision space and attribute dependencies. Furthermore, it provides the means to analyse and compare the outcomes of different scenarios and decision paths.

8. Joining conceptual systems - three remarks on TJS

Odelstad, Jan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Computer and Geospatial Sciences, Decision, Risk and Policy Analysis.

The Theory of Joining Systems, abbreviated TJS, is a general theory of representing for example legal and other normative systems as formal structures. It uses algebraic tools and a fundamental idea in this algebraic approach is the representation of a conditional norm as an ordered pair of concepts. Another fundamental idea is that the components in such a pair are concepts of different sorts. Conditional norms are thus links from for example descriptive to normative concepts and the result is the joining of two conceptual systems. However, there are often at least three kinds of concepts involved in many normative systems, viz. descriptive, normative and intermediate concepts. Intermediate concepts such as `being the owner' and `being a citizen' have descriptive grounds and normative consequences and can be said to be located intermediately between the system of grounds and the system of consequences. Intermediate concepts function as bridges (links, joinings) between concepts of different sorts. The aim of this paper is to further develop TJS and widen the range of application of the theory. It will be shown that the idea of norms as ordered pairs is flexible enough to handle nested implications and hypothetical consequences. Minimal joinings, which are important in TJS, are shown to be closely related to formal concepts in Formal Concept Analysis. TJS was developed for concepts of a special kind, namely conditions. In this paper a new model of TJS is developed, where the concepts are attributes and aspects, and the role of intermediate concepts in this model is discussed.